Super Smash Bros. Brawl (大乱闘スマッシュブラザーズＸ), often abbreviated SSBB or simply Brawl, is the third installment in the Super Smash Bros. series of crossover fighting games, developed in conjunction by several video game developers, including Game Arts and HAL Laboratory, and published by Nintendo for the Wii console. Brawl was announced at a pre-E3 2005 press conference by Nintendo president and Chief Executive Officer Satoru Iwata. Masahiro Sakurai, director of the previous two games in the series, assumed the role of director for the third installment at the request of Iwata. It is the follow up to Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Nintendo GameCube and predecessor of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. Game development began in October 2005 with a creative team that included collaborations with various second- and third-party Nintendo developers. The game was released on January 31, 2008 in Japan, March 9, 2008 in North America, June 26, 2008 in Australia, June 27, 2008 in Europe and April 29, 2010 in Korea.

Like its predecessors, the object of Brawl is to knock an opponent off the screen. It is a departure from traditional fighting games, notably in its simplified move commands and emphasis on ring outs over knockouts. It includes a more extensive single-player mode than its predecessors, known as The Subspace Emissary (SSE). This mode is a plot-driven, side-scrolling beat 'em up featuring computer-generated cut scenes and playable characters from the game. Brawl also supported multiplayer battles with up to four combatants and was the first game of its franchise to feature online battles via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection prior to that service's defunct in May 20, 2014.

The game was met with generally positive reviews, with critics praising the game's entertainment value, despite issues relating to Brawl's loading times and graphics. The game's musical score, which was composed through a collaboration among 38 renowned video game composers, was lauded for its representation of different generations in gaming history. Brawl received an aggregate review score of 94% on Metacritic and 93.3% on GameRankings. The game would become a massive commercial success, selling a total of 12.14 million copies worldwide as of March 31, 2014.

Contents

In the Super Smash Flash series

General

After the success of the original Super Smash Flash, the demand for a sequel grew bigger for its creator, Gregory Cleod9 McLeod, following the announcement of Super Smash Bros. Brawl in 2006. Despite the mixed reception of SSF, Cleod9 began working almost immediately on the sequel he gave the name of Super Smash Flash 2, which now would be strongly influenced by the then-unreleased Brawl. Mechanisms first introduced in Brawl were among the first features added into the game. Cleod9 promised to furbish all of the flaws from the original SSF, incorporating the most reliable aspects of Brawl and its predecessor, Melee. The first SSF2demo came around in the Christmas of 2007, almost one month prior to Brawl's original Japanese release.

As development grew bigger and Brawl released worldwide during the first 6 months of 2008, more content got implemented into the game. Notably, several of the characters of the playable roster were worked and sprited to resemble their appearances in Brawl; this became such a big trend in the McLeodGaming community that a term called "brawlification" was coined to refer to those recolors done on pre-existing sprite sheets in order to make the character's color scheme resemble its Brawl counterpart, either by extracting the same hue from raw screenshots from Brawl or coming up with a similar color by itself. Because of the latter, the term went on misuse as several characters were sprited from the ground up without the need of a brawlification. Among the characters that use their designs from Brawl and were sprited from the ground up include Fox, Captain Falcon, Meta Knight, Ness, Samus, Zero Suit Samus, Zelda, Sheik, Link, Jigglypuff and Marth.

Moves

Certain characters in SSF2 like Pikachu, Kirby and Yoshi have movesets taken directly from Brawl. Similarly, some characters like Mario and Donkey Kong have their movesets from Brawl, but with a few changes. Other characters like Wario and Sonic share some of their movesets from this game, but they have taken a massive overhaul. Additionally, the character Isaac appears as a playable character in this game, and his design as an Assist Trophy in Brawl helped influence his new and updated appearance in SSF2.

Items

Many items in SSF2 were taken from this game, several of which originate from it. Of these, the most notable is the Smash Ball, which floats around the stage and allows the player who breaks it to perform a Final Smash. Other items include the Assist Trophy, which summons a guest character to aid the player; the Gooey Bomb, which sticks to platforms and opponents before exploding on them; the Blast Box, a crate that produces a massive explosion when hit; and the Trophy Stand, which turns any opponent hit into a motionless trophy for a short time. Other items, including the Deku Nut, Smart Bomb, Pitfall and Unira, are based directly on their appearances in this game.